The main point of note is that YAK is now being tested against WP3 only. 2.1.7 is still supported for WP2 users, for the moment, and I’ll make bug fix releases against that version as necessary.

Changes (in this latest release) since 2.1.1 include:

2.1.2

• Fix bug with sales tax via manual CC entry, along with removal of spurious <td>
• Fix bug with sales tax via accounts receivable entry

2.1.3

• Fix sales tax in PayPal Std checkouts

2.1.4

• Fix processing problem with failed Authorize.net payments
• Fix rounding issue with sales tax values sent to PayPal

2.1.5

• Fix bug with confirmation email (missing sales tax, totals wrong)

2.1.6

• Add back missing code to handle unlimited quantities

2.1.7

• Fix problem with incorrectly calculated shipping after validation error
• Increase timeout on Authorize.net connections (occasionally seems to cause a problem)
• Fix problem with unlimited quantity handling
• Add shipping type to email flags
• Add check for the address_entry function existing (seems to cause an incompatibility with another plugin)

The next release (which may not include any major changes at all), will be 2.2.0, which will be the first official version tested against WP3.

In terms of new features, I’ve added public key encryption for storage of CC details. With the recent news about WordPress blogs hacked on a shared host (http://blogcastfm.com/announcements/warning-massive-number-of-godaddy-wordpress-blogs-hacked-this-weekend/), and various comments about many people on shared web hosts who don’t secure their WP config files properly, it seems prudent to provide the facility for more security for users of the manual CC payment feature. YAK settings are now split into 4 separate screens (General, Shipping, Sales Tax, Advanced) — on the Advanced tab you’ll find a button for generating a public/private key. The public key can be used for encrypting CC numbers, and the private key for decrypting. I’ll be adding some more detail to the FAQ at some point soon.

I’ve also added the facility to require a login for certain products, added more values to the third-party-integration event, and also incrementing item quantity (rather than displaying an error message) when the customer clicks on the buy button for an item which is already in the cart (configurable, of course). The biggest feature addition is the first version of sales tax calculations. This works in a vaguely similar way to shipping (except without the zones), but also provides for federal and state based taxes for the US. If your country has a similar requirement (state versus federal taxes), let me know, and hopefully I can fit that into a subsequent release.

YAK version 2 has just been released (the WP site should update shortly). This is a major release, with a large number of changes. Most important to note for upgraders, is YAK now uses WordPress’s shortcode API and also supports multiple shipping options. See the change list below for what this actually means, but before upgrading, I recommend taking a note of your current shipping configuration, and taking a backup of your WP environment (just to be safe).

Changes include (note, read braces {} below as square brackets []):

• Updated the codebase to use WordPress’s shortcodes API. This means the old parameter style (e.g. {yak_price type id}) is replaced by the new style {yak_price id=”" type=”"}. For example, {yak_price small 23} becomes {yak_price id=”23″ type=”small”}. {yak_quantity medium} becomes {yak_quantity type=”medium”}
• Renamed {error_message} tag to {yak_error_message} (for consistency’s sake)
• Added a {yak_sku} tag. This takes the id and type parameters (same as yak_size). For example, {yak_sku type=”small”}
• Added a facility for loading custom modules
• Added “Proceed to checkout” link to yak order widget
• Added support for multiple shipping options (this means you’ll need to reconfigure your shipping settings — on the plus side, YAK now supports more than one shipping option). Shipping is now configured in a separate screen (YAK Shipping), and is broken into 3 tabs – Basic (the basic config settings, including where you can specify what shipping options you support), Zones (specify which country belongs to which zone), and Options (where you can set the price of shipping to each zone for each option).
• Added a test facility for the confirmation email message
• Added (very) basic low stock notification
• Changed “Buy” button on the initial cart page to “Checkout”
• Added an option to include the price on Buy Button drop-down (i.e. multi options)
• Changed ID on the buy button so that it’s unique
• Added “PAYMENT_PROCESSED” option to the orders screen — for orders which have been (manually) paid (either manual credit card or deposit/cheque, for example) but not yet shipped.
• Added “DELETE” option to the orders screen — only allows orders which are CANCELLED or in ERROR to be deleted

ADDENDUM: there was a minor Javascript bug I missed fixing (and meant to before the release), so version 2.0.1 will be on the update site shortly.

There’s finally a German version in progress:
code.google.com/p/swfk-de/

Here’s a news group discussion about SWFK being used (at least in part) for a course on teaching Python:
archives.seul.org/schoolforge/…/msg00041.html

And finally, the book also made the list of beginner’s tools on the sugarlabs wiki:
wiki.sugarlabs.org/…/Resources

Chuffed.

• Add a discount override, to allow for discounts on a per-product basis (useful to get rid of old stock, for example)
• Add option-selection to products. This differs from the categorisation-method of specifying different types of a product, and allows you to setup a selectable range of options (multi-select). Thus you might have a mix-and-match product, where a customer can select 3 out of 10 options, and so on.
• Split installation code into separate file
• Fix a compatibility problem with the exclude-pages plugin
• Add more logging to product update process
• Add threshold-based promotions — promotions which are triggered by the value of the order, rather than by a promotion code/voucher.

I’m currently in the process of updating the handbook to take into account the new features. Those who have previously purchased the handbook will receive an updated copy as soon as it’s done.

This release includes mainly bug fixes, including the following:

• Hopefully fix a problem with glob (on some PHP installs)
• Move order widget into separate file
• Change “Espana” into “Spain” in English files.
• Fix problem with country missing from shipping address in confirmation email and in order screen
• Add a new tag [phone] to confirmation email
• Fix a problem with address in order export
• Add message to Credit Card entry notifying the customer that they have a final chance to confirm/cancel the order
• Updated German translation, provided by Joern

This release has been tested on both WP and WPMU.

• fix an incompatibility problem with Contact Form 7.
• fix a problem with Google Analytics tag ()

This release fixes a major problem in WordPress MU, and also a minor issue with the sidebar widget. Which reminds me, I really must update the Handbook to include details on using the Widget. If you’ve purchased the handbook in the past, expect a copy in the (e)mail in the next day or 3…

Release 1.7.1 managed to introduce a couple of bugs — my automated tests didn’t quite provide the safety net I was hoping for, in this case. Hence, versions 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 include the following fixes:

* fix a problem with PayPal IPN
* fix a problem with Accounts Receivable payment
* fix a problem with (manual) Credit Card payment
* reduce memory usage
* add instant update of pricing promotions in the first page of the cart (after hitting update)

Note: I’ve had one report of weird issues when upgrading. It doesn’t seem to break anything, but please let me know if you do have problems, because I’m yet to identify exactly what the cause might be.

• Fixing a problem with Authorize.net url
• Add checkbox for Authorize.net test mode
• Separate PayPal Pro return url (from Standard)
• Refactor payment types into separate classes to allow for easier extensibility
• Minor change to ipaddress sent to PayPal (only affects internal testing)
• Add ‘demo’ payment gateway
• Fix promo date saving problem
• Fix promo price calculation (causing problems in PayPal)
• Automatically create the Checkout page on activation
• Automatically create the “products” and “default” categories on activation
• Fix (hopefully) an odd error_log problem in certain environments

Enjoy!

At the moment, I’d say this feature is “beta” quality. The full YAK test suite runs without problem, but I haven’t really spent a huge amount of time checking that there are no issues between multiple blogs. More testing is definitely recommended for anyone who decides to enable this on an MU install…

A few years ago, back when the project was a lot less mature, I had one tentative query along those lines. But I wasn’t in a position back then to do anything about it. I am now, but I wonder is there a market for it? After all, every “man-and-his-dog” has a hosted shopping cart solution — and some are a lot more comprehensive than YAK is, even now.

Gut feeling says, probably no, but perhaps worth asking the question…?

I’m finding I have little time to work on YAK lately, for anything other than for bug fixes. There are a bunch of features I’d like to add, but unfortunately no time to work on them.

If you’re interested in helping out, and/or have features you want to add yourself — get in touch.

Browse the source for stomp.py here: http://code.google.com/p/stomppy/source/browse/

Browser the source for proton here: http://code.google.com/p/proton-te/source/browse/

I’ve also updated the Python3 version to include optparse for handling arguments, the facility to specify a file of commands as both a runtime argument and from within the stomp.py console.

For example, you can now do something like:

python stomp/cli.py --file mycommands.txt

Which I think is pretty useful, at least. Feedback welcomed.

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See the project page for more information. Any problems, as usual either email or (better yet) post in the discussion forum.

Tenjin, marketed as the fastest template engine in the world, blitzes through 10,000 pages in 5.61 seconds on a Mac Intel CoreDuo 1.83GHz (according to their website). The same benchmark runs on my Mac in about 4.98 seconds, so adjusting the other Python templating engines listed on Tenjin’s website by the same ~11% we get approximate performance of:

The original version of Proton, for the same benchmark, came in at a less than impressive 400+ seconds. A bit of tidying up reduced the current version to a more respectable (but still abysmal) 280 seconds, putting it between Genshi and Kid. A couple of other ideas produced even worse performance (more than 800 seconds), but in the meantime, lxml released a Python3 compatible version. A minor rewrite later, and the lxml version of Proton now runs the benchmark in a far more acceptable 78 seconds. Putting it between Templetor and Genshi. Still not even in the top three, but it has the advantage (again in my opinion) of being an entirely more elegant solution, and is now within throwing distance of both Templetor and Django.

Result!

Get the latest version of Proton from the Google code project. You will probably need to download and install the source dist of lxml to take advantage of the performance improvement.

As well as refactoring, I’ve added help to the command-line client, a facility for recording stats (messages sent/received), and the start of some unit tests.

The refactored version 2 is available in branch “experimental-r2″. Run hg update -C experimental-r2 after pulling the latest changes from the repo.

Let me know what you think.

• fix table charset/collation so table creation is consistent with WordPress
• add Swedish translation provided by Marco
• add Polish translation provided by Marciej
• fix more PayPal shipping issues
• new facility to add product types from the Products screen and when editing a post
• fix a problem with zero-total orders still being submitted to the payments gateway
• if the customer is logged into WordPress, record the user_id against the order (for future changes)
• add the facility to choose the type of order number: either generated (randomised) or plain sequence (linked to the order record).
• change [yak_quantity] and [yak_price] tags so that they also take params (product type and product id), for example: [yak_quantity large 25]
• fix a problem with single-quotes (‘) in addresses

I’ve also added a bunch of Selenium tests to automate the testing process, and hopefully eliminate any bugs that creep in when relying on manual tests.